


and certain stars shot madly from their spheres

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Jack's too loyal to commit adultery on a ferry, Literary References & Allusions, Post-World War I, Slightly Traumatised Characters, but by god he fancies the terrible Bohemian trousers off Phryne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9455087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: "When constabulary duty's to be done (to be done)," Nurse Fisher carolled, "a policeman's lot is not a happy one (happy one)."***Phryne Fisher hasn't taken anything seriously since 1918, including the man she trips over on a turbulent crossing from Calais to Dover. Jack Robinson doesn't mind.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TigerKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerKat/gifts).



> A fandom_stocking gift for bookblather/TigerKat, who likes Jack/Phryne and liminal spaces. Contains assorted quotes from Tennyson, Austen, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Shakespeare. I am not sure if that counts as a terrible warning or an inducement.

_Since once I sat upon a promontory,_

_And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back_

_Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath_

_That the rude sea grew civil at her song_

**_And certain stars shot madly from their spheres_ ** _,_

_To hear the sea-maid's music._

_-Twelfth Night, Shakespeare_

 

 

Jack Robinson would have liked to have had fewer memories than he did. Just generally, he could have done without remembering the Western Front. Or, to give another example, he could live for the rest of his life without ever thinking of Gallipoli. He didn't need these things, he didn't want them, and he had a hazy idea that he ought to jettison them before he got back to Australia. To Melbourne, and to City South, and most of all, to Rosie.

 

Rosie. Sometimes he thought of her hazel eyes and the worried twist of her lips, and then tried very quickly to forget them, to see only her handwriting in the few letters that had made it through to him, thoroughly mucked about by some nameless censor. He didn't want to bring Rosie - herself, her sharp-tongued, sharp-eyed, sharp-witted self, that had always seen things he was too slow to pick up on - to France. Another time, another life, it might have been a cruise, a dream. But here he was at the end of a war in 1919, and all he wanted to know was when he was going home. They'd signed the treaty last year, for God's sake, and he knew it was a long way to go - oh, he knew it so well - but did Australia not want them back? They were taking their time.

 

"It's a big empire, Jack," Sergeant Morrison had said when Jack had said a few of these things, very quietly, where the men couldn't hear - boys barely eighteen and men with young children, and lives happening behind them at home. "It's a big empire. Stands to reason they haven't got round to you and me and the lads yet."

 

Jack had grunted, and ordered more beer in very bad French. Some of the lads spoke a sort of pidgin French, but Jack had learned real French once - or tried - and some words came back easy. Words like _I'm Australian_ , _yes, I was a soldier_ , _you're welcome_ , _no thank you I'm married_ , and _a thousand apologies, miss, my friend is drunk_.

 

"We'll all be home soon enough, Jack," Sergeant Morrison said, and clapped Jack on the back.

 

"Just getting out of Paris would be a start," Jack said. "Remind me, Ned, why are we in Paris?"

 

"Not a bloody clue, mate. Not a bloody clue." Sergeant Morrison paused. "War might have something to do with it, I suppose."

 

It was summer 1919 before they were ordered to England, which was in the wrong direction, but, as Jack observed to Sergeant Morrison, at least proved that the powers that be had not forgotten they existed. They boarded a boat from Calais to Dover, with tickets to meet them in Dover to get them to Southampton ("Here, Sergeant Robinson, why can't we just go to Southampton?" "We just can't, Travers, now shut your trap and get on board,") and then, from Southampton, they'd be sailing for Australia in four days' time.

 

Jack couldn't wait, but he could have asked for better weather. It had been grey and choppy when they left Calais, and by the time they were out in the Channel it was downright nasty, the sea roiling and boiling, and the lads losing their lunches in all directions. Ned Morrison was lying flat on his back on the floor, clutching his crucifix and imploring the Lord for mercy, and Jack...

 

Jack was shirking his duty on the deck. For all the weather was nasty, it wasn't so bad that he had been sent inside. A crewman had yelled at him, but when he'd ensconced himself carefully in a corner next to a coil of rope, the man had merely sworn at him, informed him that it was his funeral, and left him alone.

 

Jack felt pretty safe, moving with the ship, the waves roaring and crashing about him, sea-spray falling fresh and cold across his face. He probably shouldn't feel so safe, but it wasn't the tightest spot he'd ever been in.

 

A woman bundled up in a heavy brown overcoat tripped over his outstretched legs and fell heavily. Jack scrambled to his knees and grabbed at her, trying to help her up.

 

"Excusez-moi, madame," he said, stumbling over the words; he assumed she was French.

 

He was rewarded with the brightest smile he'd seen since Melbourne, and the words - delivered in a pretty, crisp English accent: "Why, you're as Australian as I am!"

 

"I - I beg your pardon?"

 

The woman looked almost girlish - half an urchin, with her thick black hair plastered wetly over a pale, doll-like face - but she was probably not much younger than him. The storm made everything dark, so it was difficult to see her features clearly. But Jack could see well enough that she had a wicked smile, and a look about her that he recognised from men who had seen too much battle, and were now off the front lines, with every intention of being very drunk and very badly behaved before they had to go back: part joy, part wildness, part defiance.

 

"Sergeant Robinson," Jack said, as the woman crawled into the safer space he had found. He noted, with the policeman's eyes he thought long-dormant, that she was dressed like a Bohemian, and a straggly one at that: the man's overcoat, a vilely patterned silk scarf that had seen better days, grey man's trousers, and sturdy boots. They were small, too small for an average man's, and Jack wondered where she'd got them from. They were not stylish ladies' boots, unless the styles were very different here from in Melbourne. This young woman, though, with her blunt fringe and her knotted hair coming loose in the rain, didn't look as if she gave much thought to fashion. Or at least not as much as she did to mischief.

 

"Nurse Fisher," the stranger said, and that explained the boots. "I mean - Miss Fisher."

 

"I thought all the nurses were gone home," Jack said. A battlefield nurse could easily have seen as much of the Front as he had; he kept his tone gentle.

 

"And I thought all the diggers were gone home, sergeant," Nurse Fisher said cheerfully.

 

"I think the High Command forgot about my unit," Jack said.

 

"They didn't forget me," Nurse Fisher remarked. "Or at least, they didn't forget my lot. Nurses. Women must return home, don't you know. To keep the home fires burning and all that. But I - oh, I cannot rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees."

 

"Tennyson," Jack said, surprised.

 

Nurse Fisher laughed. The wind stole it away, and Jack couldn't blame the wind in the slightest; she had a lovely laugh, full of life. "Yes, exactly. And besides I have family in London, which is much more to the point."

 

"Ah, yes," Jack said.

 

"Whisky?" Nurse Fisher said hospitably, producing an extremely battered hipflask.

 

Jack thought about it for a bare moment. What Rosie would think, to see him drinking with a strange woman, dressed as no lady would ever dress - but Rosie trusted him, and Jack still more or less trusted himself, at least with strange women. Anyway, Rosie wasn't here, on this ship caught between sailing and drowning. "Don't tell my men," he said, and accepted a sip of something almost suspiciously good, smooth and rich and intoxicating.

 

"No fear," Nurse Fisher said, laughter bubbling under in her voice. "I want to drink it myself." She suited the action to the word.

 

"Family in London," Jack said, and ventured: "Journeys end in lovers meeting?"

 

Nurse Fisher choked on her whisky, but recovered herself before Jack could worry. "No. No, nothing of that sort. I wander lonely as a cloud, Sergeant Robinson. I prefer it. And I take it you're a Shakespeare man?"

 

"Of a sort," he said. "Not that there's much room for it in the Forces. Or the police force."

 

"You're a policeman?" Nurse Fisher peered at him. "Am I leading a copper astray?"

 

"I'm a soldier, Nurse Fisher, I'm already astray."

 

Nurse Fisher grinned. "Sergeant Robinson, you're so steady, I don't believe you've ever been astray in your life. Well, if it comes to that, there's not much room in a triage ward for Shakespeare, either, but I think it's still valuable." She tucked the flask back into one of her numerous pockets. "Poetry reminds us we are human."

 

"Too human, sometimes," Jack said. "Ever heard of a man called Wilfred Owen?"

 

"I have, sergeant, and do let's not." Nurse Fisher sighed. "How about some Gilbert and Sullivan?"

 

" _Not_ poets."

 

"When constabulary duty's to be done (to be done)," Nurse Fisher carolled, "a policeman's lot is not a happy one (happy one)."

 

A passing sailor, startled either by Nurse Fisher's singing, which was tuneful enough, or the noise from an unexpected quarter, fell over the nearby coil of rope. Jack and Nurse Fisher helped him up again, Nurse Fisher checked his skull for soft spots, and then they all cursed each other roundly in French and English and sent the sailor on his way.

 

"Well, he wasn't wrong about that," Jack said, settling back down. He was soaked now, but he felt clear and calm - nothing like the muggy atmosphere below decks.

 

"Who - Jacques? I assure you I'm not a daughter of a bitch. My mother is a perfect saint."

 

Jack blushed. "No, Nurse Fisher, I meant. Gilbert. Or Sullivan. Whichever one wrote the libretto, I've forgotten."

 

"Gilbert," Nurse Fisher supplied. "Do you dislike police work? I've always thought it would be terribly exciting. I've always wanted to solve a mystery."

 

"Solving mysteries is exciting," Jack said. "But then you need the evidence to make an arrest - and sometimes the bastard gets off anyway."

 

"I can see how that would be unpleasant," Nurse Fisher mused, and then there was a long silence, which she eventually broke with the businesslike words: "I'll trade you. Quote for a quote. First word of each new quote must begin with the last letter of the previous quote. The person who runs out of quotes first loses. If you win, you can have my flask."

 

"And if I win?"

 

Nurse Fisher smiled at him. "A kiss, Sergeant Robinson?"

 

He smiled back, but said: "No. Not that." He paused. "I've got a knife - a friend of mine made it, out of bullets and bayonets. It's a pretty thing. You can have it."

 

"Is your friend still alive?"

 

"No," Jack said, "but he liked Shakespeare, and he liked women with dark hair. He'd have liked you."

 

"I'm sure I'd have liked him," Nurse Fisher said, very gently, with a kind smile that told him she'd have made a sweet nurse as well as a good one, the kind who touched your clammy forehead like a blessing even when they weren't supposed to, and never looked disgusted by your blood or your filthy feet. "Well then. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

 

"Austen," Jack said automatically, and set himself to thinking of a quote to match.

 

He lost as the white cliffs of Dover came into view, hazy through heavy fog. Nurse Fisher gave him the flask anyway. He swapped her the knife for it.

 

"It is beautiful work," Nurse Fisher said, testing the edge and cutting herself on it. "Your friend knew a blade."

 

"That he did," Jack said, watching her.

 

Nurse Fisher got up, slightly unsteady on her feet, and grinned down at him. "So long, Sergeant Robinson. Maybe I'll see you in Australia, one of these days."

 

"Maybe," Jack said, not believing it in the slightest. "Safe travels, Nurse Fisher. Enjoy London."

 

"Oh," Nurse Fisher said, smiling. "I think I will."

 

He saw her stride away from the docks and slip onto a train to London. She had a slouch hat pulled low over her face, and if it weren't for the coat and trousers, he would never have known her.

 

On the ship from Southampton he shared the flask with Sergeant Morrison. It was Morrison's birthday, after all, and the man liked whisky.

 

Morrison sipped it and his eyes opened wide. "Where'd you get this, Jack?"

 

"A merry wanderer of the night," Jack said, forgetting himself.

 

Morrison eyed him. "Jack," he said, without marked disapproval. "And you a married man."

 

"Not that sort of merry wanderer," Jack said, exasperated. "It's Shakespeare, you idiot."

 

"You know I've never had any turn for that sort of thing, Jack," Morrison said comfortably, and held out the flask. "Here, have some yourself; it's a cure for what ails you."

 

Jack snorted, but accepted the flask. "It is that," he said, and toasted Ned Morrison.

 

By the time they reached Melbourne, he had put Nurse Fisher and her whisky and her laughter right out of his mind. He had a hazy notion that she belonged on that boat in the middle of the Channel, quoting Tennyson at him as the sea roared; and that the memory of her was safest there.

 


End file.
